Today Turbine released another developer diary, this one talking about the crafting system updates. Certainly a good read as there are lots of changes – but the main ones for me were the jeweler and cooking/farming changes.  I’ll summarize them, but certainly go check out the full notes.  A lot of this was evident from the patch notes, but this breaks it down into more detail.

All jewelry items have had not only their stats adjusted but also their looks as well.  In addition, they’re also implementing the multi-output option for jewelry just like they did for the armor professions.  Because of this, certain recipes, like the various tactics rings, will no longer exist as they are now one of the output options.  It is important to note that existing items will NOT change, just newly crafted ones.  So, if there are ones you like better make them now 🙂  For a full listing of the new stats, check out my previous post on this topic.

By far though, the majority of the changes revolved around cooking and farming.  Rather ironic as I was just doing some farming and cooking yesterday 🙂  Essentially they’re looking to make these professions more desirable and also follow the pattern they’ve set in that no profession is entirely independent.  In many ways a cook could easily provide a valuable product without ever needing another profession, unlike every other profession in game.  Well, except scholar but that’s a bit different anyway.

They’re changing it such that there will be no more store-bought only cooking recipes.  This will change quite a few recipes, including the Lembas recipe and the Lorien regen food recipe (Lothlorien Waybread).  These recipes now include “”Cup of Winter Barley Flour” which is a new ingredient recipe output for cooks that takes 2 bundles of Barley to produce 1 cup.  There’s a comparable recipe for the lower tier rations as well.  In addition, Shire apples and Golden Shire Potatoes are now from Farming only and not purchasable.

One of my favorite changes as the regen buff duration has been normalized and extended – normal is 5 minutes, crit is 10 minutes for both in-combat and out-of-combat regeneration rates (or ICR and OCR as I’ll refer to them later on).

All cooked food now has both an ICR and OCR rate associated with it, but there will be 3 different options.  High ICR and low OCR, medium of both, or low ICR and high OCR.  The shot below shows the options from the Master tier. 

Now I noticed something a little weird about the crit versions of these on bullroarer but am not sure if it is a bug or WAI.  Essentially the in-combat regen rates don’t change with a crit – see my post on the boards, but I also bugged it just in case 🙂

They’re adding new fate and will trail food which will be automatically granted to the cooks at all of the skill tiers.

New recipes including fish options for trail food.  These will provide a boost to both vitality and will which is very intriguing for many I’m sure.  However, it appears that these are only available up to the Master tier and not supreme, so that’s a bit of a bummer.

They’ve added new supreme cook trail food recipes via the Malledhrim reputation vendors!  These provide bonuses of 36 and 55 to the appropriate stat as opposed to 30 and 50 of the regular versions.  And use some of the new farming items like the green peas 🙂

And finally, farmers will get new recipes for shire apples and taters, as well as a new recipe for Green Peas which will be required for new cooking dishes.